Inside Health

By COREY KILGANNON

Published: December 22, 2004

A homeless man charged with fatally shooting a highway worker painting an overpass last month in Queens was declared mentally unfit to stand trial for the shooting, prosecutors and his lawyer said yesterday.

The defendant, Steven Boyd, 44, was evaluated by one psychiatrist and one psychologist from Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn. The report was presented yesterday in State Supreme Court in Queens, prompting an angry outburst in the courtroom from Theresa Gaviglia, the wife of the slain worker, James Gaviglia, 38, a Queens man with three daughters.

Mr. Boyd will be re-evaluated periodically to see if he is fit to stand trial, but Queens prosecutors and Mr. Boyd's lawyer said it was unlikely that he ever would be. ''I'd be surprised if that happened,'' said Michael C. Anastasiou, a lawyer for Mr. Boyd.

Ms. Gaviglia angrily criticized the finding, accusing the doctors of not seeing through what she called Mr. Boyd's act. In a telephone interview later, she recalled screaming an obscenity-laced tirade at Mr. Boyd when he walked into the courtroom.

''I promised I would control myself,'' she said. ''But he walked into that courtroom all cleaned up and shaved and wearing new clothes and getting three meals a day, all on our taxpayer money. Then when I saw the big smile on his face, I just lost it.''

She added: ''He should be in with the psychos in jail, or else back out living in the cold without clothes or money. But instead, we're all paying so he can live in the Ritz.''

The psychological report, known in court as a 730 Exam, essentially concluded that Mr. Boyd lacked the capacity to understand the proceedings against him or to assist in his own defense, Mr. Anastasiou said.

Mr. Boyd is being held without bail in the psychiatric unit of Kings County Hospital Center but is likely to be sent to the Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center in Poughkeepsie.

Mr. Boyd was arraigned on charges of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.

A Brooklyn native, he lapsed into homelessness and erratic behavior after his mother died several years ago, and he began sleeping on a concrete support under Northern Boulevard, where it passes over the Grand Central Parkway in Corona, Queens.

According to Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, Mr. Boyd flew into a deadly rage after a crew of workers trying to paint the overpass asked him to clear away his encampment.

Prosecutors say that during the first two days of work, Mr. Gaviglia gave Mr. Boyd some change and a sandwich to help persuade him to move. On the third day, they say, Mr. Boyd grew angry, shot Mr. Gaviglia three times with a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol he had carried for years, then lighted a cigar and waited for the police to arrive.

Mr. Anastasiou, a Queens lawyer in private practice appointed by the court, said he met Mr. Boyd yesterday and interviewed him for an hour.

''The doctors found an array of mental disorders and confirmed that he has hallucinations and hears and sees things,'' Mr. Anastasiou said.

''Clearly, he's a sick man and unable to contribute to his defense,'' he said. ''You can catch him for 60 or 90 seconds when he has his faculties, but then other times he doesn't seem to understand what's really going on.''

''He was living in a box under a bridge for, what, four or five years?'' he said. ''He was literally swept under the surface, under the pavement of civilized life. To a degree, society bears some responsibility, too. We have a tendency to put homeless people on the side, and we cannot do that without consequences sometimes.''

Ms. Gaviglia disagreed. ''Nothing will ever compare to what he did to my family,'' she said. ''He can never hurt as much as we're hurting,'' she said. ''My daughters are screwed up for the rest of their lives. They go to therapy three times a week.''

She said that her two younger daughters, Jessica, 6, and Alyssa, 9, did not appear in court, but that Danielle, 16, insisted on coming.

''She wanted to see what justice was going to be done to the man who killed her father,'' Ms. Gaviglia said. ''But there wasn't any.''